English tutorial school expands in Cebu

A Japanese-owned English language school based in Cebu City has expanded its facility to accommodate more students.

The QQ English Tutorial School inaugurated yesterday its new school, which now occupies three floors of the Skyrise 4 building at Asiatown IT Park in Lahug, Cebu City.

QQ president and chief executive officer Raiko Fujioka said the bigger facility now allows them to accept a maximum number of 200 offline students which can be easily accommodated in the 120 available classrooms.

QQ president and chief executive officer Raiko Fujioka says the Filipinos are the best non-native English speakers in Asia and very qualified to teach the language. With him is Department of Tourism Central Visayas Director Rowena Montecillo. Click on photo to enlarge. (PHOTO BY MARLEN LIMPAG)

The language school currently has 20 offline students and QQ hopes to increase their number within the year. The bulk of QQ’s clients are its online students numbering around 3,000.

Majority are Japanese students

Majority or about 90 percent of QQ’s online clients are Japanese but it hopes to attract more Korean, Chinese, and Middle Eastern students, said Fujioka.

Fujioka said the Filipinos are the best non-native English speakers in Asia and are sought as teachers. He added that this is why QQ’s 150 teachers are all Filipinos, and they get additional training from Lorraine Warne, a Cambridge Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics instructor and the school’s global training strategist.

“Many Japanese can’t speak English very well but they’ve realized that it is a very important language to learn,” Fujioka pointed out.

No slang

He said Filipinos speak clean English unlike the ordinary American, who uses a lot of slang, because it is also a second language to them.

According to him, this is why Japanese students are comfortable with the Filipino teachers because they understand how best to go about learning the language.

Online learning at QQ is through the free video conferencing service Skype. Fujioka said Skype is changing how learning is being undertaken and QQ is looking at possibly expanding its services to include not only language but even subjects like Mathematics, something that the Japanese excel in.

“We’re looking at a big market, which is the Americans, for our other services,” he stressed.

Marlen is a co-founder of journalism start-up InnoPub Media, a company involved in e-books production and the data tagging of heritage and tourism sites in the Philippines through QR or quick response codes. She is a pioneer in community online journalism and managed the website operations of Sun.Star Network Online, the website of the Sun.Star chain of community newspapers for 10 years.